But the pudgy baby of the family, 9 year old Judit, drew the most gawkers of all. The tournament was abuzz not just with the spectacle of one pretty young powerhouse: Susan’s raven haired sister Sophia, 11, swept most of the games in her section, too. At 16 she crushed several adult opponents and landed on the front page of The New York Times. Trust your intuition.” When Susan was the age of many of her students, she dominated the New York Open chess competition. ”Once you have a winning position,” Susan said, ”play with your hands, not your head. The boy’s minutes slipped away to inevitable loss. ”Don’t worry about your eyes everybody loses to her anyway,” his mom said helpfully. A reluctant 9 year old suffering from an allergy attack was then coaxed to step up to the challenge. A retired bartender and a 14 year old boy succumbed almost as quickly.
Susan beat him with a good 30 seconds to spare. The two began slamming pieces and punching down their side of the clock, creating a percussive sound track to their lightning fast moves. She first sat across from a young Serbian man. ”Tonight, everyone will get to play me.” Blitz chess it was each opponent received five minutes on his clock to Susan’s one.
”I have a special treat,” Susan, 36, announced in her gentle Hungarian accent. Susan Polgar was perfumed, coiffed, made up and dressed in a sleek black pantsuit, an elegant contrast to the boys and young men hunched over their boards in her Queens, New York, chess club. The Grandmaster Experiment Carlin Flora The world’s first female grandmaster was ready to deliver her regular Thursday night lecture.